“Good. You’re being given a great honor, you know. A very important assignment.”
“Yes, Commander.” Promotion to the core-guard was indeed an important assignment, although . . . it was odd that he was receiving orientation all on his own. He’d expected that he would be inducted in a small group. Therehadbeen years when only one person had marks high enough to merit the core-guard, but only rarely.
“Her Majesty picked you for this one herself,” Eozena said. That was . . . alarming. That Her Majesty knew hisnamewas something he wouldn’t have ever dared to hope for. “Are you a nervous sort, Hoskadem? Do you need a moment?”
“No, Commander,” he said. Perhaps if anyone had given him a hint about what the assignment was, he might have.
She clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man. Well. Let’s go introduce you, then. I don’t think you’ve had a chance to meet him properly yet.”
Him? Evemer had a sudden horrible suspicion of whose service, precisely, he was being assigned to.
Eozena led him inside, through doors guarded by pairs of kahyalar in full dress uniform, armed to the teeth and glittering in the sun—he himself had not yet been issued his core-guard uniform with its darker blues and bright silver braid. If it had been mandatory, he would have been sent to the requisitions offices first to be outfitted properly. He concluded, therefore, that he should not feel embarrassed to be underdressed.
The commander stopped at a pair of carved mahogany doors. “Listen,” she said in a soft voice. “He’s not a difficult charge. Very quiet, keeps to himself. I’ve known him since before he could walk—he’s always been good. Do you understand?”
Oh, no. Evemer knew exactly who he was being assigned to. “Commander,” he said, faintly strangled.
She nodded once and rapped on the door before cracking it open. “Pardon, Highness. Hoskadem is here. May I introduce you?”
Highness. The prince.
Damn.
There was a long silence. “Yes” came a tired voice. “He can come in, if he likes.” Eozena nodded briskly and opened the door the rest of the way, waving Evemer in before her.
He looked at her. He looked at the doorway. He looked at her.
She raised her eyebrow at him, the most fearsome expression he could possibly conceive of.
He entered the room.
It was just as splendid as the rest of the Gold Court. The vaulted ceilings were painted with a lace-like pattern of delicate vines and flowers, rich-colored carpets covered the floors, and the windows stood wide open, the curtains fluttering in the spring breeze.
In the center of the room there was a low table, set for a breakfast that had not been touched. On the opposite side of the table, not touching his breakfast, was the prince.
The prince—Kadou—was but two or three years younger than Evemer, smaller and slighter than him in every respect. His hands, wrapped around a brimming cup that was no longer steaming, were slender and well-manicured. His ink-black hair spilled long and shining in waves and soft curls down to his elbows, and his eyes were large, luminous, and the blue-black color of the ocean on a dark night.
Evemer had noticed all those things before. The first time he’d laid eyes on the prince up close had been at the Grand Temple on the night of Princess Eyne’s birth when Commander Eozena had brought him and several other of the fringe-guards to run messages for her in the wake of the Shipbuilder’s Guild break-in. That night, His Highness had looked tired, harried, distracted—and rather like he’d rolled out of bed in a hurry and only flung on a dressing gown over his nightshirt to run to the temple. A little disrespectful to the gods, Evemer had thought, but excusable in the circumstances.
The second time he’d seen the prince had been at the Shipbuilder’s Guild itself the next morning. Evemer had been posted on guard at the door, and His Highness had arrived on horseback to hear the first reports from the investigation. Evemer had held the bridle while His Highness dismounted. He’d already looked exhausted, but he had paid enough attention to smile at Evemer and say thank you, and then he’d asked tentatively if Evemer could be spared to fetch him a cool drink—the morning had been unseasonably warm, and His Highness had been wearing heavy, high-formal court robes. Evemer had run off to do just that, thinking that mere well water wasn’t nearly good enough for the prince of Arast, that he would have to seek a street merchant willing to sell him something nicer.
Prince Kadou had gone inside to see to the hysterical guildmaster. When he’d come back out, he’d mounted up on his beautiful milk-gold horse again as if he’d forgotten the request. Evemer had offered him the flask he’d bought from a vendor down the street, and he watched His Highness’s face as he took a deep draft from it and tasted the sharbat sekanjabin, cold and sweet and snapping with the refreshing edge of vinegar.
The exhaustion had cleared from His Highness’s face, and a sparkle of light and pleasure had come into his eyes, and he’d looked down at Evemer, smiling gratefully, and he’d sighed, “Oh, you’re a godsend.”
All Evemer had done was bring him a cool drink, but it had felt like that one smile had shoved him six inches out of alignment. He’d been thunderstruck with that moment for days afterward, and still felt a little of it now when he remembered it. He’d thought perhaps he’d been embellishing it in his own memory.
But then His Highness was also the one who had gotten Balaban and Gülpasa killed.
Evemer found that he was angry. The shock was beginning to settle in now. Balaban had been someone he admired. Gülpasa was the closest thing he’d had to a friend—not a particularly intimate one, but he had respected her. They had both helped him prepare for the exams. They’d each, on separate occasions, heard him confess in a whisper that admittance to the core-guard was what he’d wanted most in all the world. It was the one thing he had been striving toward for as long as he could remember.
He felt as if His Highness had somehow deceived him with that shining moment at the Shipbuilder’s Guild—as if he’d tricked Evemer into thinking well of him and only then revealed the truth in his heart.
Evemer thought again of that moment, of His Highness on his milk-gold horse, resplendent in blue and silver, glittering in the sun with the light on his hair and in his eyes, as radiant as a god-kissed prince out of legend as he asked graciously for Evemer’s service. That kind of display should havemeant something.
But it hadn’t. Perhaps it was Evemer’s own fault. Perhaps he was lying to himself if he thought any of that could have been real and true.
“Hello,” said Prince Kadou.